JIMMIE OPENS HIS DREAM-BOOK.
“Now, don’t be too sure about finding Colleton in British Columbia,” Mr.
Havens warned, when the boys consulted him regarding the point they had
been discussing. “We are out here on the faintest kind of a hint, and it
is just possible that the hint was contributed by friends of the
mail-order people in order to draw our attention from the real point of
interest. Such things are often done.”
“I don’t believe the secret service department would send us on such a
journey because of a mere hint,” Ben argued. “There’s something back of
it all that we don’t know anything about!”
“I have an idea that we know nearly as much as the department does,”
smiled Mr. Havens, “except in one regard. We don’t know where the hint
came from and they do. We never shall know!”
“Is there a record anywhere which shows how the two men were dressed?
Meaning, of course, the two men who were seen in the corridor in front
of Colleton’s door?” asked Ben.
“One of the girls working at a desk not far from the door is on record
as saying that the heavy man was dressed entirely in brown, including
hat and gaiters, and that the slender man was dressed in a sporty coat
with large checks, and a pocket or roller felt hat. He wore a wing
collar, a hard-bosomed shirt, and a red necktie.”
“Quite a sporty looking guy!” laughed Jimmie.
“Did any one ever see Colleton dressed like that?” asked Ben.
“Colleton was very particular about his wardrobe,” replied Mr. Havens.
“On the day in question, he wore a neat suit of blue serge, a new derby
hat, and a soft silk shirt with a Byronic collar. His tie was a mixture
of white and blue. Half a dozen girls remembered exactly how he looked
as he stepped into his office that morning.”
“Now, look here,” Ben chuckled, “if Colleton was to be abducted, and a
man was to do the disguise stunt for him, wouldn’t the villain of the
play attempt to make the disguise a strong contrast to the usual dress
of the victim? Colleton was quiet and refined in his dress, as you
describe it, and it seems to me that a disguise intended for him would
naturally partake of the sporty style.”
“That’s good argument, Ben!” Mr. Havens answered.
“That’s only plain common-sense,” laughed the boy.
“Gee!” exclaimed Jimmie, turning to Ben. “I’m going to write a detective
story about you some day, and have it printed in one of the leading
magazines on the back page next to the soap advertisements!”
“Now, here’s another point,” Ben went on. “The man who went to
Colleton’s room that day to take him away carried the articles he used
in disguising the man there with him. Now, here’s the question: What was
done with the coat, and hat, and shirt, and tie usually worn by
Colleton?”
“That’s easy!” Jimmie laughed. “The villain carried the coat and hat
away with him, and put on a starched shirt or a dickey over the silk
one. The correct course for the fellow to take would be to fasten a
dickey around Colleton’s neck, showing a false front, a wing collar, and
a red tie. That would be the easiest way to do the job!”
“Go on!” laughed the millionaire. “I like to hear you boys talk.”
“Now, what I want to know is this,” Ben went on, “has any effort been
made to find the coat and hat Colleton wore that morning?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Mr. Havens. “It is my opinion, however,” the
aviator went on, “that the villain, as you call him, would take the coat
and hat with him.”
“Did he carry a hand-bag when seen at the door?” asked Jimmie.
“Come to think of it, he did not!” was the reply.
“There you are!” exclaimed Ben. “You’ve all regarded my theory of the
case as possible, but imaginative. Now, let me ask you a question, Mr.
Havens. If the coat and hat should be found in or about that room in the
post-office building the finding would establish our theory of the case,
wouldn’t it?”
“It certainly would!” was the answer.
“Well, then,” Ben continued, “I want you to find out at the earliest
possible moment whether the coat and hat are hidden in that apartment.”
“They might have been thrown out of the window!” suggested Jimmie.
“Hardly,” Mr. Havens suggested. “Colleton had an inside room. Anything
thrown out of his window would land on the skylight which arches over
the mail division on the ground floor. The coat and hat would have been
discovered within five minutes, and even if they chanced to be
overlooked during that day, they would have been discovered by the
sweepers the next morning.”
“That’s just what I wanted to know!” Ben laughed.
“Now, if the garments are not in the room, they must have been carried
away!” Jimmie cut in. “Perhaps the villain put them under his clothes.
That’s an old trick with criminals.”
“Just one more question,” Ben began as Mr. Havens nodded for him to
proceed. “How did the villain get the papers out of the locked drawer of
the desk and the closed safe?”
“That’s another mystery,” Mr. Havens continued.
“Don’t you think he buffaloed Colleton after he drugged him and forced
him to open the safe and the desk and take the papers out?”
“That is very probable,” was the reply.
“In that case,” Ben went on, “where would the villain naturally throw
the coat and hat?”
“In the safe!” shouted Jimmie springing to his feet. “Has the safe been
opened yet, Mr. Havens?” the boy continued.
“An expert was at work on it when I left New York,” was the reply.
“Well, when they get it open,” Ben asserted confidently, “they’ll find
Colleton’s hat and coat inside.”
“Say, but it’s easy to solve this case as long as we establish all the
facts to suit ourselves!” laughed Jimmie.
“I believe this little thinking machine,” said Mr. Havens nodding to
Ben, “really has the right view of it!”
“He thinks so, too,” grinned Jimmie wrinkling his freckled nose.
“Yes, and so do you!” declared Ben.
“If you know all about the case, then,” Jimmie went on, “why don’t you
tell us how this burly ruffian got Colleton out of Washington? Mr.
Havens says the alarm was given within half an hour of the disappearance
of the inspector. It seems to me that the cops might have dragged in a
hundred sporty looking men with red neckties and slouch hats for the
inspector’s friends to look over for the purpose of identification.”
“If you talk with the Washington officials to-night,” Mr. Havens said,
“they will insist that the two men who were seen at the door of Mr.
Colleton’s room had nothing to do with the disappearance of the
inspector.”
“Has the theory ever been advanced that the thin, doped-looking fellow
might have been Colleton?” asked Ben.
“Not until advanced by you that I know of!”
“So they didn’t look for the man in the sporty coat and red tie?”
“I am certain that they did not.”
“Well,” reiterated Ben, “when they find him, they’ll find Colleton!”
“Now, go on and tell us how they got the inspector out of Washington,”
said Jimmie, with a provoking wink in the direction of Mr. Havens.
“You can answer that question yourself, Jimmie,” replied Ben.
“Of course I can!” answered the boy. “They had a taxi at the Eleventh
street entrance with a man inside. From the building they drove directly
to the Union station. There they took a stateroom for Frisco. I don’t
know what time the train left, because I haven’t got any railroad
time-table in my dream-book, but I can tell you what they did after they
got to the depot,” he added with a sly wink at the millionaire.
“Go to it!” laughed Ben. “This beats the Arabian Nights!”
“When they got to the depot they found the stateroom already engaged on
a train leaving that night for the Pacific coast. They stripped the
inspector, put him in pajamas and tucked him into bed.”
“What’d they do that for?” asked Ben.
“So they could tell the porter not to be intruding into the room and
waking a sick man!” said Jimmie. “So they could give a good excuse for
having meals sent in to the inspector.”
“Go on,” grinned Ben, “turn another page of your dream-book and see what
you find there.”
“On the way across the continent,” Jimmie chuckled, “they kept the
inspector under the influence of dope sixteen hours and a half out of
the twenty-four. The other seven hours and a half they devoted to the
third degree. You see, the spirit of the little Indian maiden which now
controls me,” the boy grinned, “whispers in my ear that they offered him
a good many thousand dollars if he’d quit the game.”
“Jimmie,” Ben said with a superior look, “if you keep on exercising your
imagination you’re likely to bring up in the back room on the top floor
of the foolish house!”
“All right!” laughed Jimmie. “You just see if they didn’t get him out of
Washington in that way!”
“Suppose you look in your dream-book again,” smiled Mr. Havens, “and
tell us what became of the sporty coat, the dickey and red tie, and also
the slouch hat. Also the beard! The slender man wore a beard!”
“I don’t have to look in the dream-book to find that,” replied the boy.
“The villains dumped the stuff into the first river they came to.”
“There’s been nothing like this since The Sign of the Four was written,”
laughed Mr. Havens. “You boys would consider yourselves abused if it
should be discovered that Colleton disguised himself and disappeared
because he had decided, for financial reasons, not to appear against the
mail-order people.”
“Sure we would!” declared Jimmie.
“Or if it should be discovered that he walked out of his office
unattended that day and was abducted from the buffet of the Raleigh
Hotel. That would twist your theory some, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” laughed Jimmie. “If a shovel-nosed pike from the Potomac
river should crawl into a back yard and set up life as a hen, that would
be remarkable, too, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s right!” Mr. Havens advised. “Stick to your theories. I half
believe they are right!”
“Now, about this proposed visit to Crooked Terry,” asked Jimmie. “Do you
think we’d better take the _Louise_ out and have a talk with him
to-night?”
“Keep on, Jimmie!” Ben grinned. “You’ve landed Colleton in a stateroom
on the Pacific coast, so what’s the use of looking for him in a
smugglers’ den on the Continental Divide?”
“I didn’t say what they did with him after they got him to the coast!”
Jimmie replied. “My private opinion is that they brought him up here and
hid him! They wouldn’t check him for safekeeping with the smugglers,
would they? Of course they wouldn’t, but Crooked Terry might know of
some likely hiding-place in this section!”
“It won’t do any harm to go and talk with the fellow, anyhow,” Ben
suggested. “We can fly up there to the camp, get what information he
possesses and be back in a couple of hours.”
Leaving Carl to his slumbers, the boys prepared a hasty supper for
themselves and Mr. Havens and started away in the _Louise_.
The night was clear and they had no difficulty in making their way to
the landing which they had discovered on the previous night.
“I don’t think we ought to leave this machine alone,” Ben said as he
alighted. “Why don’t you go up again and fly about until I signal with
my electric for you to come down?” he asked Jimmie.
“I’d like to talk with this old boozer,” Jimmie argued.
“Well, one must stay with the machine!” Ben insisted. “If it’s all the
same to you, I’ll talk with this Crooked Terry and you come down when I
signal.”
“You’re on!” declared the boy. “I’ll fly over the summit and watch you
rolling down the gully.”
When Ben reached the place where the fire had blazed on the previous
night, he was surprised to see a bed of coals remaining. Drawing nearer,
and flashing his light he saw a well-dressed young man lying unconscious
on the shelf, his silk hat scorching on the embers, and a small
traveling-bag blistering under the heat. Over the figure, knife in hand,
stood Terry.